Strategies, Practices and Tools
Decades of research provides a clear understanding of how skilled reading develops and how to most effectively support children in learning to read proficiently. Evidence-based, structured literacy instruction develops all the foundational language and literacy skills that must be woven together so that children can make meaning from the words they read.
The information presented here is intended to complement evidence-based core reading curricula and intervention programs already in place and help educators fill in gaps or modify their approaches with effective strategies, instructional practices, and tools and activities to implement them.
Early childhood educators can focus their practices to help children build language and emergent literacy skills. Pre-K and K-3 educators can find evidence-based ways to provide explicit, implicit, and incidental instruction across the essential components of literacy. And English Language Arts teachers across grades 4-12 will find effective practices to help students meet the increasing need for skilled reading.
Instructional Strategy
Provide explicit instruction to students about what words mean and how to say and use them correctly.
Students must understand a vast number of words for comprehending different and varied texts. Students must understand the meanings of words, as well as the pronunciations of words to communicate.
First grade vocabulary predicts reading comprehension of 11th grade students.
Effective Practices
- Include turn and talk in the instructional routine so that students say the word and use the student friendly definition of the word.
- Select words that are essential to understanding the text (Tier 2 words).
- Choose books to read aloud that expose students to many unfamiliar words (Tier 2 and Tier 3).
- Provide a student-friendly definition for unfamiliar words that are explicitly taught and for unfamiliar words that are encountered during a teacher read aloud.
- Provide opportunities to engage in meaningful independent reading experiences to learn more word meanings.
- Before students can read text on their own, provide many oral language interactions and many opportunities to hear books read aloud to explicitly teach and expose students to vocabulary words.
- Kindergarten
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- Using a variety of appropriate texts for read alouds, provide explicit instruction on carefully-selected Tier 2 vocabulary words.
- Teach word meanings through student-friendly explanations.
- Use visual aids to assist with teaching vocabulary words.
- Teach students to identify and sort common words in basic categories.
- Teach students to identify real‐life connections between words and their use.
- Teach students to distinguish shades of meaning among verbs describing the same general action by acting out the meanings.
- Grade 1
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- Using a variety of appropriate texts for read alouds, provide explicit instruction on carefully-selected Tier 2 vocabulary words
- Teach word meanings through student-friendly explanations.
- Use visual aids to assist with teaching vocabulary words.
- Teach students to use frequently occurring affixes and how to use affixes to determine the meaning of a word.
- Teach students to identify frequently occurring root words and their inflectional forms,
- Teach students to use sentence‐level context as a clue to the meaning of a word or phrase.
- Grade 2
-
- Using a variety of appropriate texts for read alouds, provide explicit instruction on carefully-selected Tier 2 vocabulary words.
- Teach word meanings through student-friendly explanations.
- Use visual aids to assist with teaching vocabulary words.
- Teach students to determine the meaning of the new word formed when a known prefix is added to a known word.
- Teach students to use a known root word as a clue to determine the meaning of an unknown word with the same root.
- Teach students to use knowledge of the meaning of individual words to predict the meaning of compound words.
- Teach students to use sentence‐level context as a clue to the meaning of a word or phrase.
- Grade 3
-
- Using a variety of appropriate texts for read alouds, provide explicit instruction on carefully-selected Tier 2 vocabulary words
- Teach word meanings through student-friendly explanations.
- Teach students to determine the meaning of the new word formed when a known affix is added to a known word.
- Teach students to use a known root word as a clue to the meaning of an unknown word with the same root.
- Teach students to use sentence-level context as a clue to the meaning of a word or phrases.
- Teach students to distinguish the literal and nonliteral meanings of words and phrases in context.
- Teach students to identify real-life connections between words and their uses.
Tools and Activities
Make Connections with New Vocabulary
Sample explicit instructional routine to build vocabulary.
Download from Florida Center for Reading Research
Related
Developmental benchmarks and literacy behaviors that most children display at a particular age/grade.
Evidence-based reading interventions support students who are identified as struggling with specific foundational literacy skills.
Evidence-based core curricula, interventions, and supplemental programs play a critical role in supporting students’ reading success.
While seemingly effortless, good reading is made up of a set of complex skills and strategies.